“The situation in Iraq is extremely dangerous and atrocities happen systematically to LGBT’s,” said COC president Vera Bergkamp. “The protection to LGBT asylum seekers from Iraq which the Netherlands currently provides is totally inadequate. We ask Minister Leers to grant them asylum collectively.”

LGBT asylum seekers, if they want to avoid being deported, must still prove that they are personally at risk in their countries of origin. For Iran there is an exception. LGBT asylum seekers from that country need only to show that they are homosexual.

What then, is the difference between Iran and Iraq? Not that human rights in general, and LGBT rights in particular, are better in Iraq than in Iran. They are definitely not. However, NATO governments like in the USA, Britain, and the Netherlands now have a conflict with their Iranian counterparts about oil etc. While, on the contrary, Iraq, ever since George W. Bush invaded in 2003, over a million people were killed, over four million people became refugees, and Royal Dutch Shell got Iraqi oil contracts, is supposedly a ‘new’ Iraq, a human rights paradise. Never mind the horrible reality.

The COC estimates that there are five to fifteen LGBT asylum seekers in the Netherlands now who are at risk of being sent back to Iraq.

The COC view got approval from Human Rights Watch (HRW). On Thursday, they sent an urgent letter to Minister Leers. According to HRW special militias are active in Iraq which hunt LGBT’s. Just in February already forty homosexuals in Iraq were killed, says HRW.

HRW reported in 2009 that death squads hunted LGBT’s. It is estimated that since 2003 some 750 homosexuals were killed in Iraq. Death-rolls with the names of homosexuals hang on walls in Iraqi neighbourhoods, according to HRW.

The Jeju islanders, supported by international activists, are resisting plans to construct the base on the sacred Gureombi rocks in Gangjeong village on the island just a few hundred miles from mainland China.

The base is to become a port for US navy aircraft carriers and Aegis destroyers fitted with SM-3 missile interceptors as part of its global US missile defence programme.

Campaigners argue that the growth in the missile defence system risks heightening international tensions and risks precipitating a new global arms race.

Despite determined opposition and a poll which showed that 98 per cent of the islanders oppose the base, Samsung – the South Korean navy contractor – began blasting on Wednesday.

It moved in just hours after the local governor Woo Keun-min issued an emergency appeal to South Korea’s government to suspend construction.

Protesters entered the blasting site in an attempt to halt the detonation but were forcibly removed.

Yesterday the campaigners blockaded nearby roads in a bid to prevent construction equipment being brought to the site.

Among those who entered the blasting area was Angie Zelter, a British Trident Ploughshares member from Knighton in Powys.

She said: “Gangjeong villagers’ peaceful lives and the pristine nature of Jeju deserve to be protected from this aggressive act by the Korean navy and its US backers.

“Building the naval base does not advance the security of Jeju or South Korea – it just adds to military tension on and around the Korean peninsula. This affects us all.”

And Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament chairman Professor Dave Webb, who has just returned from Gangjeong, told the Star: “The government I think selected this area because they thought it was a small place and the resistance would not be strong.

“The activists who go there are shocked by the way the villagers have been treated. They have been ignored, beaten up, suppressed but they will not give in.

“They have an amazing spirit and sense of dedication.”

He said that the base was being sold as a joint civilian-military installation but that there was no question that it would be predominantly for military use.

Campaigners opposing the construction of a South Korean naval base on a world heritage site will stage a vigil outside the country’s embassy in London tomorrow: here.

Today is the deadline for private investors in Greek government bonds to decide to what extent they will voluntarily participate in a debt relief deal. The Association of International Finance (IIF), which negotiated the so-called “haircut” with the Greek government, has warned of catastrophic consequences should the debt swap agreement fail to be implemented.

IIF President Charles Dallara said Tuesday that an uncontrolled default of Greece would cost more than a trillion euros, as the resulting panic on the markets spread to Spain and Italy. Under the headline “Fear of a Trillion Bankruptcy”, the German financial newspaper Handelsblatt reported Wednesday that some banks were “speculating on a decline of the euro”.

The American hedge fund Greylock was the first to refuse to participate in a debt haircut for Greece and has since been followed by other large private investors. Uncertainty over a voluntary debt solution for private creditors led to severe losses on the stock markets on Tuesday. The German DAX at one point plunged by three percent.

A voluntary debt swap is part of the agreement reached by the finance ministers of the euro zone at the end of February. Their approval for a second financial package for Greece of more than €130 billion was subject to two conditions: first, the implementation of savage austerity measures, and second, a debt haircut for private bondholders amounting to 53.5 percent of the nominal value of their Greek bonds.

The social cuts were adopted by the government and parliament in Athens in the face of increasing popular resistance. But private creditors are stepping up their own offensive and demanding new conditions.

This is despite the fact that the banks and investment funds involved in the debt deal have already been compensated. The new €130 billion “bailout” package for Greece involves transferring €93 billion to the banks in return for their write-off of €107 billion of the face value of their Greek bonds. This is under conditions where the banks involved have long since written off the bulk of these bonds.

The terms of the relief packages for Greece were dictated by the banks and have led to an increase in the financial and political power of the international financial aristocracy. As a result, the reactionary profit motives of a handful of the most rapacious private investment groups are now able to determine the fate of Greece and other euro countries.

Under the headline “Hedge Funds Threaten Debt Deal,” the Süddeutsche Zeitung writes: “Hedge funds with racy names like Marathon, Saba or Vega hold up to a quarter of the Greek bonds held in private hands.” The newspaper points out that if a number of other hedge funds follow the lead of Greylock, the acceptance rate of the deal rapidly falls below the necessary 90 percent.

What is publicly presented as the financial markets’ “sacrifice,” a “waiver” by private creditors, giving up over half of the value of their Greek bonds, is in fact a financial gift to the banks; here.

On November 4 US prosecutors imposed a $1.2 billion fine on hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors for engaging in insider trading “on a scale without known precedent.” The hedge fund is owned and managed by Steven A. Cohen, who has become enormously wealthy through SAC’s operations. His 2012 net worth was estimated at $9.4 billion: here.

Britain: The government was slammed today for pushing through cuts that are largely falling on the shoulders of women as MPs from all parties voiced their support for International Women’s Day: here.

Prime Minister David Cameron and his sidekick Nick Clegg pledged todayto sign the Council of Europe’s Convention on Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence – a vow that failed to impress female activists: here.

International Women’s Day 2012: Sylvia Pankhurst, the forgotten suffragette: here.

Sabita Malla, 27 years of age, is WWF-Nepal’s Senior Research Officer. With a Master’s Degree in Wildlife Sciences from Wildlife Institute of India in Dehradun, Sabita has made significant strides as a young female conservationist. Her professional career started with WWF-Nepal in 2010 as Research Officer for the Terai Arc Landscape (TAL) Program; she was promoted to Senior Research Officer in less than two years.

Sabita has been a part of some of the most challenging and successful wildlife monitoring and research operations at WWF-Nepal. Some of these included the ID-based rhino monitoring program and gharial population survey in TAL, Nepal’s first satellite telemetry to monitor tigers in Bardia National Park, and the implementation of Management Information System Technology (MIST) in Shuklaphanta Wildlife Reserve, Chitwan National Park and Bardia National Park to aid patrolling and species monitoring activities.

As we celebrate the indomitable spirit of women in the backdrop of International Women’s Day, WWF-Nepal brings to you Sabita’s story through excerpts of an interview conducted with her at Bardia National Park in Nepal’s Terai Arc Landscape. Sabita is currently leading a team of 33 people in the national park in setting up about 120 camera traps to help monitor tiger populations in the area, and also conducting prey-base population monitoring.

Growing up in a small village in western Nepal, the outdoors was my playroom. I would go looking for butterflies and birds in the forest, wading through streams, climbing up and down the hills while naming every tree I crossed along the way.

It gave me a deep love for nature that motivated me to study about species ecology, habitats and conservation at India’s prestigious Wildlife Institute of India.

But it was only during my field research in 2009 that the wildlife conservation crisis in Nepal became real to me. I can still hear the echo of gunshots as poachers killed wildlife inside Bardia. It made me realize that I had to be part of the efforts to save my country’s iconic species.

And here I am today, right back in the same protected area, working with the government and local communities to assess the important progress we’ve made in the past few years.

How does it feel to be leading an all-male team for this tiger monitoring project?

People tell me that being the only woman during field operations is probably a big challenge. I don’t think so. And I do not think that I should be treated differently from my male colleagues. The most important thing is to be very adaptive and able to work with others. You need to create a bond of trust and respect with each and every team member. When I am in the field, I am the same as my other team members. We are connected by one cause—to help understand and protect wildlife.

Forced Ultrasound, “Informed Consent,” and Women’s Health in Texas: The Sad State of the State. Andrea Grimes, RH Reality Check: “Last month, when news spread that Virginia legislators were considering a forced trans-vaginal ultrasound bill, the uproar was loud, clear and immediate: women would never stand for this invasive and unnecessary law. Politicos and pop-culture icons alike spoke out against the Republican-led legislation. What kind of world are we living in, reasonable people wondered, when ‘informed consent’ is tantamount to state-sanctioned rape?” Here.

Women’s Rights Are Human Rights. Ron Jacobs, The Rag Blog: “Besides the fact that it celebrates women in a society primarily controlled by men, it is the socialist roots of International Women’s Day that have discouraged its celebration in the United States…. The insistent capitalism of America’s ruling classes will not so much as even acknowledge a holiday determined by the workers that celebrates something besides the domination of Wall Street and Washington”: here.

As International Women’s Day is celebrated across the globe, She Bop a Lula, a photo exhibition at the Strand Gallery in London, pays tribute to music’s leading ladies from Tina Turner to Siouxsie Sioux via Beyoncé, Diana Ross, Debbie Harry and Sinéad O’Connor. The shots are all taken by women photographers, who have agreed to donate them for free: here.

The Gender of Media Creators Affects What We See. Anne Elizabeth Moore and Mickey Zacchilli, Truthout: “For Women’s History Month, ‘Ladydrawers’ offers part two of our look at gender disparity in hiring practices across all media … an issue underscored by VIDA’s release of 2011 gender counts in literary publishing last month. What we start to see when we compare labor stats to content concerns is a direct relationship between who makes and edits our news, art and popular culture – and how women are portrayed in media”: here.

Where is the outrage on gender oppression in #Swaziland? – call for action: here.

This video is about the 8 March demonstration in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Jobs (and Your Tax Dollars) for Christians and Crisis Pregnancy Centers. Sofia Resnick, The American Independent: “If you want to help carry out the anti-abortion mission of the taxpayer-funded Care Net Pregnancy Resource Center, you have to be a Christian. It’s right there on the Rapid City, S.D., center’s volunteer application…. But that hasn’t stopped the center from receiving federal funding and other forms of government support”: here.